


The Road To Byzantium

by Barb Cummings (Rahirah)



Series: The Barbverse [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Gen, Road Trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 22:36:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rahirah/pseuds/Barb%20Cummings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Knights of Byzantium have returned to Sunnydale. Spike, Dawn and Anya take to the road to avoid them, but when they run into a mysterious hitchhiker, their plans go awry. Can a neutered vampire, an ex-vengeance demon, and the Key to the Universe evade a very human foe?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Road To Byzantium

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set in the same universe as _A Raising in the Sun_, _Necessary Evils_, et. al. (See the [Barbverse Timeline](http://sleepingjaguars.com/buffy/viewpage.php?page=timeline) for specifics.) It was written for leni_ba in the 2008 Choose Your Author Ficathon. Thanks to betas extraordinare typographer, shipperx, slaymesoftly, deborahc, kehf, and bruttimabuoni.

Spike was on fire again.

The dusting of curly light-brown hair on his left wrist was starting to singe and fizzle in the filtered sunlight. Wisps of smoke curled upwards and whipped away out the window. The first time it had happened, sitting at a red light in Ventura, Dawn had panicked and thrown her Diet Sprite at him. By now, fifteen miles out of Ojai, it was starting to get old.

"Fucking hell," the vampire muttered, slapping the flames out before his skin could catch. He examined the red spot with a scowl. Dawn fished an ice cube out of her cup and handed it over to him solemnly.

In the back seat, Anya looked up from her magazine and heaved an exasperated sigh. "You know, if we'd just waited until it was dark..."

Spike took a drag on his cigarette and flicked the butt out the window. It bounced off a _Fire Danger: HIGH_ sign and tumbled to the shoulder in a shower of orange sparks. "Not a chance. We want to be well out of Sunnydale before those Byzantium wankers roll in."

"Because running away from them worked so well the last time," Dawn muttered, so low that no one could hear it.

No one except the vampire with super-sensitive ears, anyway. A muscle in Spike's jaw twitched, and his knuckles went whiter-than-white on the wheel. "Not going to be like the last time," he said flatly.

"I didn't mean it like..." Dawn trailed off unhappily. Of course it wasn't going to be like last time. Last time her sister had been with them. Not that it had made any difference, in the end. But Buffy was gone now. _My sister is dead,_ Dawn thought, rolling the words around in her brain, testing the weight of them. It wasn't fair. She hadn't even had time to get used to _My mother is dead_ yet. Buffy'd died a hero, saving the world - saving _her_ \- one last time. But dead was still dead.

It didn't help the way the others looked at her - pitying, sure, but she was positive that behind the pity was _Why are _you_ still here?_ Dawn couldn't blame them. Sometimes she asked herself the same thing.

"It's all right." Anya reached out with the hand that wasn't still encased in a neon-purple wrist brace, and patted Spike's shoulder. "We realize that it must be emasculating for you to be sent away with the non-combatants, but - "

Spike's scowl was just a hair short of game face. ""m not a sodding non-combatant!" he snarled, leaning over to fiddle with the radio.

The car swerved. Anya hopped up and finger-flicked the back of his head. "Ten and two, Spike!"

Reflexively, Spike swung around and batted back, only to double over in agony as the chip fired. Dawn dropped her soda and grabbed the steering wheel, ice cubes cascading across the floor as the DeSoto slewed across both lanes and leaped the shoulder onto rough ground. The gnarled trunk of a live oak reared up before them, and then Spike's long fingers covered hers, his lips skinned back in a terrified snarl as he wrestled his pain and the black steel monster of a car into submission. Tires thundered over gravel, a spray of prickly leaves clawed the hood, and with a bump and a jounce they were back on the highway. Spike brought the DeSoto to a halt and sat there, head bowed, shoulders shaking, hands welded to the steering wheel.

"Violence is never the answer," Anya observed placidly. She sat back and gave the pages of her _Modern Bride_ a crisp snap. "Extremely satisfying, but never the answer."

Spike growled low in his chest, and one hand left the wheel and crept towards the inside pocket of his duster, where Dawn knew he kept a flask of whiskey. Sweat beaded his brow above the rims of his day-driving goggles - nothing to do with the heat; it was a stress thing for vampires. Halfway there his fingers clenched, and his fist dropped to one knee. Timidly, Dawn laid a hand on his arm, feeling muscle and tendon tense as steel cable to her touch. "Are you OK?" she asked.

"Fine, Bit." The harshness in his voice was the kind that kept it from shaking. He cast a longing look in the direction of his duster pocket, and then his mouth firmed. "Promised Buffy I'd take care of you, 'n I will. Whatever it takes."

Dawn picked a melting ice cube off her shirt as they pulled out onto the highway again. Spike didn't look OK. He looked exhausted and hung over and scared. And _thin_. Spike had never been a big guy, but he'd always had a _solid_ sort of leanness to him. Now every ounce of extra weight (and there hadn't been all that many ounces to begin with) was burnt away, and then some. You could lose yourself in the hollows of his eyes, draw blood on the cathedral arches of his cheekbones.

She'd have to get some pig's blood to keep around for when he came over, Dawn decided, and make sure he was feeding right. She could tell Mr. and Mrs. Rosenberg it was a science project. Still, this was about a million times better than the condition she'd found him in when she'd first braved his crypt a couple of weeks after Buffy's death.

For the next fifteen minutes they drove in silence. State Route 33 spooled away ahead of them, snaking up into the foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains. The July sun beat down on the dusty green armies of scrub oak and manzanita marching uphill and down alongside the road. Dawn propped her knees up and laid her head against the grease-smudged windowpane, watching the chaparral roll by. That was one of the cool things about driving with Spike: he didn't care about stuff like sneakers on the dashboard. It was probably the only cool thing about this trip, though. The DeSoto's air conditioning, if it had ever had any, had given out years ago, and Spike, of course, didn't need it. If he'd been by himself, he'd have had all the windows rolled up tight, the blacked-out panes protecting him from the sun. But his passengers needed air, especially if he planned on chain-smoking all the way down the Cuyama River.

"I'm bored," she announced. "We should play a game or something."

"You can help me pick out bridesmaid's dresses," Anya offered. "I'm thinking green."

A wicked light sparkled in Spike's eyes, and the barest hint of a grin quirked his lips. "Think Harris would appreciate the traditional burlap and blood larva, myself."

Dawn shuddered. "Speaking as a potential larva wearer? I vote green." Obviously a subject change was in order. "I know. Spike could tell us a story."

Spike raked a hand through his platinum-blond curls - in the last couple of weeks, he'd started touching up his roots again, which was an encouraging sign. "Dunno as I've got anything entertaining to hand," he said.

Dawn was conversant enough in Spike-speak to know that meant, _Come on, flatter me into it._ "Aw, but you're so good at it," she wheedled, batting her eyelashes.

"Laying it on a bit thick, Snack-size," Spike growled, but it was his good-humored growl this time. "Lessee. I ever tell you about the time Angel and I were trapped in a submarine?"

Dawn slouched down in the cracked black leather seat and slurped at her Sprite till the ice cubes rattled, letting Spike's voice and the summer heat lull her into a half-doze.

_A vampire, an ex-vengeance demon, and the Key to the Universe were driving down the highway..._ And that was the really annoying thing about all this, Dawn decided. She'd never, ever _felt_ like the Key to the Universe. In the last year she'd discovered that her whole life was a magically-manufactured lie, that she was really some vast cosmic force squished into human form. And that everyone who was anyone, mystically speaking, was out to either destroy or control her. And none of it mattered. She still felt exactly like Dawn Summers, desperately ordinary fourteen-year-old girl.

Ever since she'd found out that her older sister was the Slayer, the Chosen One, the one girl in all the world who'd inherited the mystic strength and skill to fight the demons and vampires of the world, she'd gone to bed every night wishing desperately for something just as special to happen to her. And now, surprise, she was even more special than the Slayer. And Buffy was dead and Mom was dead and Dad wasn't answering Mr. Giles's calls, and every single one of those jealous memories was fake, fake, fake, and she knew exactly why Buffy had always complained that being special sucked major ass.

At least Buffy had helped people. All she was good for was to be the key to a door no one wanted to open. And that wasn't anything she wanted to think about, here in a getaway car driven by a vampire with a behavior-modification chip in his head that meant he couldn't fight humans without giving himself a migraine, chaperoned by an ex-vengeance demon who still hadn't completely recovered from the injuries she'd gotten the last time someone had tried to capture the Key.

"...so I decided I'd win Dru's black heart back, and your Will was just the witch to help me do it..."

Dawn shook herself. Spike had segued out of one tale and into another.

"...made the colossal cock-up of thinking the best way to keep the Slayer off my back was kidnapping her bratty little sis..."

"Hey!" Dawn said, indignant. "I wasn't bratty! I was... spunky!"

"Worst mistake I ever made," Spike went on, with a mock-doleful shake of his head. "'course, I _was_ plastered at the time. Dunno why the experience didn't put me off the drink for good." Dawn stuck her tongue out, and he continued with a grin, "What I hadn't taken into account was, the Slayer might not have been home, but your mum was, and let me tell you, I'd rather the Slayer come at me with a stake than Joyce Summers take the sharp edge of her tongue to me. Gave me a proper hiding, your mum did." He chuckled reminiscently. "If your sis hadn't barged in, all huffy and righteous, I give it even odds Joyce could have talked me into heading back to South America then and there."

"Do you ever think that maybe it didn't really happen that way?" Anya asked, intrigued. "Maybe all of that was inserted into your memory when the monks created Dawn. I mean, it's not very plausible, is it? Two years ago, Willow was barely able to make a pencil float, and it's not as if there aren't plenty of competent witches in South America. So why would you have decided she was the one to cast the love spell for you? And how likely is it that as notoriously vicious a vampire as William the Bloody would end up drinking hot chocolate and blubbering about his ex-girlfriend to his victims?"

"Didn't blub," Spike replied with great dignity. "I was expressing my grief in a restrained n' manly fashion." He shrugged and lit another cigarette, with a little smile at Dawn. "Whatever happened before Half-pint here come to us doesn't signify, does it? 'Sides, it was bloody good hot chocolate."

"Mom was always - " Dawn stopped, hoping Spike would attribute the catch in her voice to a sudden case of Sprite poisoning. "Wait. What's that?"

Anya leaned over and pressed her nose to the cloudy glass. "What's what?"

Dawn pointed. "Up there on the shoulder, at the top of that next hill - it's moving!"

All three of them squinted out into the bright afternoon. The shadows were still crawling out from beneath the rocks and bushes where they'd hidden from the noon sun, but on the next rise limped a shadow torn free of its moorings. The scarecrow figure took a swaying step out onto the asphalt, waving its ragged arms in some arcane semaphore. Spike immediately applied foot to accelerator.

"Wait!" Dawn shrieked, as the DeSoto roared past the hitchhiker. "Stop! That's a person!"

"Right," said Spike. "An' coincidentally enough, people are exactly what we're trying to avoid at the moment."

"But he's hurt!"

"He _looks_ hurt," Anya pointed out. "But is he? It could be a trap. If any of the Knights who were here last spring bothered to phone home to headquarters before Glory slaughtered them, the rest of the order probably has dossiers on all of us. The Lower Beings know Spike's car's not exactly inconspicuous, not to mention Spike."

It made sense - and yet... Dawn's shoulders hunched mutinously. Was she going to let this Key business turn her into a hermit? Someone afraid to risk talking to any random stranger because they _might_ be a member of some wackazoid Key-stealing cult? She was gripped with the sudden conviction that unless she wanted to spend the rest of her life holed up behind tinfoil windows, ordering all her food and clothes over the internet, they absolutely had to stop the car. "And what if it's not a trap?" she demanded. "This is practically the middle of the desert. He could die if we leave him here."

The complete disinterest in Spike's face was... well, inhuman. "So?"

Vampires just didn't get this stuff, she reminded herself. She wished she could see Spike's eyes behind the insectile lenses of his goggles. "Look, if you do good things for people, they'll do good things for you." Honesty compelled her to add, "Sometimes."

"That so?" Spike cocked a skeptical eyebrow. "Question is, then, what could that bloke possibly do for me that's worth riskin' your life if it is a trap? Not a lot."

"Maybe he's a brilliant brain surgeon who could take your chip out so - never mind, he totally isn't." Dawn played her trump card. "It's what Buffy would do."

For a second she thought it wasn't going to work. Then, "Bugger," the vampire muttered, hit the brakes, and punched the car into reverse.

They rolled to a stop about fifty feet from the hitchhiker, who'd collapsed into a desolate heap of rags on the side of the road when they'd driven past. The man, whoever he was, scrambled to his feet again and broke into a lop-sided run, gesturing wildly. The dusty rags of his clothing fluttered wildly in the breeze. He was brown-haired and nondescript, younger than Dawn had thought at first - it was his clothes, and the ragged growth of beard he was sporting, that made him look older.

Spike watched his approach in the rear-view mirror. "Right, we're stopped," he said. "Now you want to tell me who's going to hop out and talk to the violent lunatic - the fourteen-year-old girl, the bird with the broken wrist, or the bloke who bursts into flame?"

Dawn bit her lip and frowned, unease overtaking her burst of altruism. Something about the hitchhiker's face was awfully familiar. The man was banging a fist on Spike's window now, and Dawn could see his lank hair swinging over a very familiar forehead tattoo - the sigil of the Knights of Byzantium. "Turnabout, turnabout!" he croaked. "Carry the lass who's born to be king!"

Dawn's belly went cold. Behind the scruffy beard... "I know him," she whispered. "He's one of those crazy guys from the hospital. The one I tried to talk to first, last winter, back when I was trying to find out what it meant, being the Key." It had never occurred to her to wonder what had happened to all the people Glory had brainsucked - they'd just seemed to disappear after Glory died. "What do you want?" she said, voice quavering.

"Green girl, shining girl, so beautiful - mine eyes have seen the Glory," the man whispered earnestly, drawing aside his rags to reveal an ugly red scar across his belly. "And all the king's horses, and all the king's men! Et tu, Brute?" He eyed Spike, and bared yellowing teeth in a sudden mad grin. "He hath a lean and hungry look. Such men are dangerous."

"Too right," Spike growled. "So you'd best be on your way, and we'll be on ours."

The man slammed his fist down on the hood of the car with a frustrated howl. "My way your way wrong way wrong wrong wrong! Full fathom five my father lies, into the cradle endlessly rocking!"

"Bugger this for a game of soldiers." Spike revved the engine, and the man leaped back with a little yelp. "He's barmier than Dru."

"Can't you figure out what he means?" asked Dawn. "It seems awfully important."

Spike shook his head. "He's just rabbiting on about the ocean."

The man's face lit up. "It is an Ancient Mariner - "

"'He stoppeth one in three,' yeh, yeh, I know," Spike interrupted. "Look, mate, if - " he stopped abruptly, eyes going wide as the crazy quilt of literary references clicked together into something that apparently made sense to him. "Oh, bloody hell."

"What? What?" Dawn shrieked. The ragged man was pounding on the door again, fear distorting his drawn face. "Spike, we have to let him in! He's been hurt, maybe someone's still after him - "

Spike was already slamming on the gas, cursing a blue streak. "Not him, you bog-ignorant chit! You! He's trying to warn us - " One look at her adamant face and he braked again. "Anya, open the fucking door! Get in, you cheese-brained berk!"

Anya scooted over, forgoing the color commentary for a grimace of distaste, and the ragged man broke into an elated grin. "Backwards, turn backwards, and a star to steer her by!" he cried.

But he was only halfway into the back seat when Dawn saw the riders crest the hill in front of them. Men on horseback, their foreheads tattooed with the same mark that their hitchhiker bore, and wearing the black surcoats of the Order of Byzantium. The ragged man saw them too, and gave a wordless wail of defeat and anguish. The mounted troop galloped through the brush on either side of the highway, flinging handfuls of glittering metal at the road as they swept past the car. The rear door slammed behind their new passenger, and the DeSoto swung around with a roar, only to lurch to an explosive halt as both front tires blew out on the scattered caltrops.

Half a dozen knights leaped from their horses and rushed the car, wrenching the passenger-side door open. Gloved hands grabbed Dawn's shoulders, dragging her out of the car. _No, oh no, it's all happening again!_ "Let me go!" she hollered, kicking and squirming. In the back seat, Anya was thwapping anyone who came near with her bridal magazine, and the ragged man was striking out with blind, hopeless fury. Dawn sank her teeth into the nearest thumb and was rewarded with a yell of pain.

Spike shrugged his duster over his head and lunged across the front seat with a roar of his own, grabbing her ankles. He flinched as full sunlight slapped him across the face, then bared his teeth and held on. For a moment the whole bizarre tug-of-war teetered in precarious balance, one vampire against six men, and then fire licked along the backs of Spike's exposed hands. Blue flame leaped up on each separate knuckle and tendon, charring the already-scorched flesh and spreading upwards along thin, steely wrists towards the straining curve of his shoulders.

"No!" Dawn screamed. "Don't you die! Don't - "

He wasn't letting go. He wasn't letting go! Sheer panic drove Dawn's heel into Spike's face. The unexpected boot to the head broke his grip where the pain of fire hadn't, and Spike, still aflame, tumbled backwards into the dark interior of the car. She caught one last glimpse of his pale, stricken face as they hauled her away. She'd seen that look in his eyes just before he'd toppled from Glory's tower, on the night when he'd almost saved her, almost saved Buffy. It was a million times worse now.

The ragged man was already sprawled face-down and moaning in the scrub, while more knights pulled a very uncooperative Anya from the back seat. Dawn twisted wildly in the knights' grasp, trying to see if Spike had gotten back into the car safely, but all she could see was the faces of her captors, and above them, the gnarled branches of live oaks, reaching up into a blue, blue sky. The knights threw her down, pinning her spread-eagled to the ground. Rocks dug into her shoulder blades, and every thorn and twig on the West Coast was trying to work its way into her clothes.

"We have Orlando, General!" someone shouted.

"You traitorous bastard!" a second voice snarled. There was the meaty thud of boot connecting with ribcage, hard. "You almost lost us the Key!"

An older man with a grey-streaked goatee and more elaborate forehead tattoos strode up, leading his lathered horse behind him. "Hold, Dagobert! Our brother cannot be held responsible for his actions. You know this. And he has been an invaluable aid in bringing us this far." He shot Dawn a look of weary disgust, like she was some icky but necessary household task he had to complete - taking out the garbage, or cleaning the toilets. "Did you think we would simply give up?" he said. "We are Byzantium. Kill one, and we send a hundred. Kill a hundred, and we send a thousand."

"I didn't kill anyone!" Dawn spat.

"No?" Goatee's eyes were flinty. "But how many have died for your sake?" He waved at the nearest of his men. "Dagobert, Neville, search the vehicle and dispose of the demon. Brother Maynard, take charge of Orlando, if you will. And Alauno... bring the knife."

A knight with a shaggy blond mustache clapped a fist to his chest and trotted off, while two more headed back towards the DeSoto. A cleric in black robes took the arm of the man in rags - Orlando, then - and drew him to his feet. "No!" Orlando cried, as Maynard led him away, out of Dawn's line of sight. "The great work has yet to be completed! The shining ones are coming, the harriers of Heaven!" he shouted back at her. "The Key is the link, the link must be restored!"

"General Aethelred," the taller of the two knights who'd gone to inspect the car said, "The demon is gone. This is all that was left." He held out one gloved palm to display a small heap of grey ash. If Dawn's heart had faltered before, it stopped now. Curiously, she didn't scream or cry or even feel sad. It was almost like she'd stepped outside herself, leaving the fear and sorrow behind, because right now, she just couldn't deal with it. Mom, Buffy, Spike... she'd hit overload.

The knight turned his hand over, and ashes drifted down, sprinkling the front of her shirt with grey-white flecks that...

That smelled an awful lot like the contents of the DeSoto's ash tray.

She was pretty certain her heart hadn't really stopped beating, but it sure felt like it had just started again. She was the Slayer's sister, and she'd seen a lot of vampire ash in the last few years. It was gritty and grey-brown, not flaky and grey-white, and it sure as heck didn't smell like the butt-end of an unfiltered Marlboro. Something had happened in that car, something other than Spike burning to death. But even if he was still in one piece, the sun was still high, and Spike still had a chip in his head. He wasn't going to leap to the rescue, at least not right this minute.

Somewhat to her surprise, she found herself talking. "You know Glory's dead," she said. "My sister killed her. So she can't use me to open all the other worlds into this one any longer. It's all over. You don't need to be doing any of this."

General Aethelred stared down at her for a long moment. "Before we lost contact with General Gregor in the spring, he informed us that those accursed monks had made the Key flesh. You engendered in him grave doubts - he did not join the Order to slaughter children. He spoke of it as a test of his devotion." He sighed. "I regret this, girl, more than I can say. But while the Beast is indeed dead, there can be no assurance that another will not rise in her place some day, when once more the stars wheel round to the proper configuration. Another who will complete the task at which she failed. I regret that you must die. But die you must."

Alauno returned, sweating, and handed over a dagger with a short, triangular blade - similar to the athame Dawn had seen Willow and Tara use for some spells, but slimmer and more deadly-looking. Aethelred took it, clasping the leather-wrapped hilt in both hands. He looked briefly upwards as if in prayer, and -

"WAIT!"

The knights turned. "You're planning on cutting her throat, aren't you?" Anya continued, as if she were discussing whether she wanted brie or Camembert to accompany dinner. "You're forgetting something very important."

Aethelred glared for a moment. "Bring the woman here," he said at last, and a pair of knights frog-marched the rumpled but unfazed Anya through the brush to face him. "And what, pray tell, escapes us?"

"Just this," she said. "Glory's dead, yes. But before she died, she shed Dawn's blood, at the proper place and the proper time. The doors of the universe were opened. I'm sure your adepts sensed something rotten in the State of California about then."

Aethelred glanced at Brother Maynard, who nodded. "And?"

"And those same doors were closed again, by her sister's blood. Neat trick, exploiting the laws of similarity like that. But the universe, in my experience, doesn't like having neat tricks played on it." Anya tossed her hair and smiled, and it wasn't a very nice smile. "If you shed the blood of the true Key here and now, so soon after and close to the Hellmouth... well, I don't know about you, but personally? I'd rather be very far away when you try it."

"And who are you? What qualifies you to speak of such things?" Dagobert demanded.

Anya straightened, and all of a sudden her eyes were as ancient and unyielding as the stone of distant mountains. "Who am I? I'm Anya Christina Emmanuella Jenkens soon-to-be-Harris, who was Anyanka of Arashmahaar, born Aud of Sjornjost. I was cursing men with suppurating boils when your Order was a gleam in some out-of-work Templar's eye, and I've prudently run away from more apocalypses than you have hairs in your chinny-chin-chin, so if I were you? I'd listen to me. And set us both free with abject apologies, and possibly chocolate."

_Go Anya._ Dawn held her breath. Athelred's frown screwed his forehead tattoo into grotesque inky patterns. "Is this true?" he asked Brother Maynard.

The cleric spread his hands and made a small distressed _tch_. "It's not an impossible scenario. We would have to make greater study of the local aether to determine if it's truly the case." He looked unhappy. "I should prefer that someone with a more thorough grounding in aetheric disturbances - Brother Edric, perhaps, or Brother Selwin - conduct any such investigation. It is not my field of expertise."

Aethelred's face was red from more than the heat, but after a moment he gave a short nod. "Very well. Maynard, send a summons to the chapterhouse and bid Edric attend us with all speed. Until then," he shot a sour look at Anya, "you are our guests." He waved. "Bring the horses. We shall return to camp."

***

After two or three hours slung across a horse's broad butt, bouncing down an almost-nonexistent trail in the brazen July sun, Dawn was ready to embrace the sitting-and-doing-nothing part of being a prisoner with open arms. Or tied-together arms. But they'd been sitting and doing nothing now for as long as they'd been riding. The knights' camp was several miles off the highway, at the bottom of a steep-walled canyon - Sespe Creek, from Dawn's brief study of the dilapidated road map in Spike's glove compartment. Now, at the height of summer, the creek was only a few inches of swift brown water purling its way between tumbled boulders and sun-bleached reeds. The sun had set over an hour ago, but the canyon's floor had been in shadow long before that.

"Hey!" she shouted, as a knight trudged past carrying an armload of silvery, sun-weathered driftwood for the fire. "How long till you hear from Brother Selwin?"

The knight shook his head and kept walking towards the creekside, where his compatriots had built a fire circle on the sandy beach, and pitched a couple of big Army surplus tents. Dawn and Anya had been tied up with a good fifty yards and a thicket of brushy willow separating them from the camp proper.

Dawn sank back against the rocks with a groan. "How are we supposed to know if they're calling this Selwin guy by cell phone or carrier pigeon?"

"Either way, we stall them as long as we can," Anya said. "We were supposed to call Giles when we reached Fresno, and when we don't, they'll know something's wrong. I imagine that Xander's on his way to rescue us right now."

Craning her neck, Dawn peered through the whippy branches. She could see the passing shadows of knights against the orange glow of the fire, tending to camp chores. Horses whickered softly in their picket lines, hooves clacking against river-stone as they shifted their weight from hip to hip, and the tantalizing odor of roasting meat filled the air. "How many of them do you think there are?"

"Not a thousand, that's for certain," Anya shifted a little in her bonds, as if her wrist was paining her. Which it probably was. "There really aren't that many left. The Order of Byzantium's been in decline for centuries, and Glory slaughtered most of the active members last spring."

"Giles and Willow were supposed to stop the Knights in Sunnydale!" That had been the whole point of them leaving town: Spike would keep her and the still-recovering Anya out of danger, while Giles and Willow cast a confusion spell which would send the knights going in circles until they wore out and gave up. Dawn gnawed on her lower lip. Willow was getting better at magic all the time, but her control still left a lot to be desired. Maybe the spell had failed. Or maybe...

"Well, yes, it's possible they're all dead in various gruesome ways," conceded Anya. "But I prefer to look on the bright side. The knights were waiting for us, so it's not likely they went to Sunnydale at all. Maybe they're just smarter than we gave them credit for. Things that have been around for centuries usually are."

"But who'd tell them that we were leaving town, or which way we were going?"

Anya shrugged. "Spike's got enemies, Dawn. It doesn't even have to be someone who cares about you being the Key. He hasn't made himself Mr. Popularity in the last year or two."

That was true enough. Dawn hunched unhappily against the boulder. There were plenty of demons in Sunnydale who thought Spike was a traitor, and who'd love to see him meet his comeuppance at the hands of a bunch of humans. And plenty of demons who'd sell out the Slayer's orphan sister just for kicks. Once Spike got back to town and found out just who those demons were, Dawn wouldn't bet on them living long and happy lives, but that was assuming Spike himself was still undusty. Which he absolutely, definitely was.

But that didn't mean they should just sit around and wait for a rescue. Especially with no way of knowing how long it would take this Selwin guy to get here. The trailhead leading into the canyon had been plastered with ROAD CLOSED signs, she didn't hold much hope of running into other hikers. Dawn braced her shoulders against the rough surface of the boulder behind her, fingers sifting through the scree of fallen rock beneath her, trying to find a sharp edge that maybe she could use to saw through the rope binding her wrist. Why not? It worked in the movies.

The crunch of boots on gravel warned them that someone was coming. Dawn suspected that Aethelred had ordered them tied up so far away from camp precisely so his men would have as little contact with them as possible, and not start thinking about what it meant that the Key was a human being. But now Alauno, the knight with the unfortunate mustache, tramped up the slope towards them, carrying two wooden spoons and bowls slopping over with rather watery chili con hamburger. "Here," he said, "General's orders. As long as you're here, we're not going to starve you."

"How thoughtful. Are we just supposed to plunge our faces in?" Anya inquired.

Alauno set the bowls down on the flat of a nearby rock. "That, or I'll untie your hands," he said, "but only one at a time. Don't try anything. I'll be watching."

"Go ahead," Dawn said, nodding at Anya.

"So," Anya said brightly, accepting the bowl as if it were only her proper due, "Are you a full-time knight? Or is this only a weekend thing? Frankly, there doesn't seem to be much room for advancement." She surveyed his forehead critically. "One can only get so many tattoos."

Alauno looked a little embarrassed - probably, Dawn thought, he was an accountant in Modesto or something, when he wasn't trying to shiv fourteen-year-old girls for the greater good. She kept feeling around for the perfect rock while Anya distracted the knight, though she wasn't sure what they'd do if they did escape. She didn't like the idea of wandering around in the middle of nowhere, and she didn't trust her ability to find her way back to the highway in the dark. Maybe Anya knew about wilderness survival. But Anya had spent most of her life as a vengeance demon who could teleport out of anywhere she didn't like - why would she need to know about wilderness survival? She could see them wandering around till the desert sun made them as crazy as Orlando. "How is he?" she asked abruptly. "The crazy guy, I mean."

Alauno snorted. He glanced over at the fire, where Orlando was sitting, rocking back and forth, curled into a hard knot of arms and legs. "No better or worse than he's been for the last three months. He babbles of devils and angels dancing in the mouth of Hell, and a green light that devours them all. Brother Maynard says he is unlikely to recover his wits, but we care for our own."

"Yeah, well, he didn't seem too happy to see you this afternoon," Dawn muttered.

That got her a sharp look. "He knows nothing of what he does. His mind was stolen by the Beast. We found him amongst the bodies of our fallen brothers, one breath away from joining them." The knight collected Anya's bowl and spoon, and re-tied her hands. "But God works his will even in tragedy, for only madmen and wizards can see the Key is it truly is, and it was Orlando who led us to you."

"Yippee." Dawn shook her head at the bowl Alauno offered her, suddenly queasy. Everyone always forgot she'd seen all that happening - seen Glory rip apart grown men as if they were stuffed toys, as the Knights of Byzantium had charged to the attack, an attack that wasn't aimed at Glory, but at _her._ Who did you cheer for, when something like that happened? "Who stabbed him?"

"The Beast," Alauno replied impatiently. He held out the bowl. "Who else? Do you want this, or not?"

Dawn clasped the rock she'd just found a little tighter and gave a sulky shrug. "Why bother to eat when you're going to kill me?"

"Suit yourself," the knight said, and started back towards the camp.

Dawn waited till Alauno was out of earshot. "Got one," she whispered. "Can you scootch over?"

Anya wriggled round so they were sitting back to back, and Dawn went to work. It was immediately apparent that cutting a rope with a sharp rock, when you couldn't see either the rope or the rock, was a heck of a lot harder than it looked in the movies. "Ow!" Anya hissed, as Dawn's hold slipped for the third or fourth time.

Dawn grit her teeth. Locks of yucky, sweaty hair kept falling in her eyes and making them sting, and chaff from the dry reeds was getting down the neck of her t-shirt and itching like crazy. "Stop making so much noise!"

"Then stop slitting my wrists!"

There was a loud clatter. "Rats!"

"What?"

"I dropped the rock." Dawn leaned sideways and strained her fingers. It had to be right back there someplace... there it was! "When we get loose, we have to go back and find Spike."

"I think Spike's gone," Anya whispered back with unnecessary vehemence.

"No! That wasn't vampire dust!"

Anya went quiet. After a moment she said, "I didn't say it was." When Dawn remained stubbornly silent, she added, "It's been hours since the sun set."

The cool night breeze felt even cooler all of a sudden. Dawn blinked back tears - stupid to cry, when Spike wasn't dust. But when she looked at it logically... against a supernatural opponent, Spike was their first line of defense, but against a human opponent, he was all but helpless. At best, the vampire had been badly burned today. And what with falling off Glory's tower and not feeding right, he wasn't in very good shape to begin with.

Let's face it, Spike wouldn't be in this mess at all if it wasn't for his promise to her sister. He'd be back in Sunnydale, kicking back with a beer and a game of kitten poker. Or gone from Sunnydale altogether. And Buffy was dead. How long could she reasonably expect Spike to stick around? He had a life, after all. Or an unlife. Whatever.

Her rock was cutting into her palm harder than it was cutting into the rope. Dawn squeezed her eyes shut against the stupidness of tears and sawed harder.

"Here!" The bark of Alauno's voice made her heart race. "What are you two - "

It was then that they heard the noise - a chilling scream that echoed off the canyon walls, dying away into a deep-throated, coughing snarl. The horses burst into shrill whinnies of fear, plunging and kicking against their tethers, and knights dashed to calm them. Alauno stopped dead and stared upwards. Overhead long pale ridges of limestone stretched their bony fingers up the cliffs, fringed with trees like ragged black lace against the night sky. Nothing that human eyes could see moved there. Another scream rang out.

"What was that?" someone called out, a mote of panic in their voice.

"Cougar," Dagobert snapped. He emerged from one of the tents carrying a very un-medieval-looking shotgun. "They come down out of the mountains when there's a drought. Probably after the horses." He glanced over at the General, who gave a curt nod. "Ewald, Antonin! Take your squads and circle the camp - Ewald, you go upstream, and Antonin, you go down. Make a lot of noise! You two, with me!" Dagobert waved to Alauno and another knight, and Alauno trotted off, as another blood-curdling scream ripped the night air.

"Hey!" Anya yelled. "What about us?"

If anyone heard, no one answered. Half the knights split into two groups and fanned out into the darkness, shouting and beating the brush along the riverbank. The rest of them gathered closer to the fire, shooting uneasy looks out into the night. Dawn had the sick feeling that if a cougar ate them, Athelred would consider his problem well-solved.

"Maybe we can get closer to the fire," she said. "If we can kind of hop on our knees..."

Anya jerked her chin at the jagged expanse of rocks and scrubby brush between them and the beach, and then at her own light summery skirt and blouse. "Or we could stay here. I'm not dressed for excruciating pain."

A low, warning growl sounded from the brush, and Dawn froze. Ever so slowly, she turned her head to the side. The willow-withies parted with a dry rustle, revealing a pair of tawny, predatory eyes, enormous pupils flashing red in the firelight. That was impossible. There was no way a cougar could have gotten from the top of the canyon to the bottom so quickly. Unless... there were two cougars?

Dawn swallowed hard, in an attempt to foil her stomach's plan for crawling up her throat and leaping for safety on its own. What were you supposed to do if a cougar was after you? Don't run, make a lot of noise - or was that bears? With her hands tied, she couldn't even throw rocks. Without thinking, she dug the toes of her sneakers into the stony rubble, and kicked hard, flinging half a dozen small stones wildly into the air. "Take that, Snagglepuss!"

"FUCK!"

The eyes levitated straight up, and Spike surged out of the underbrush, rubbing his bruised forehead. "Second time today you've tried to brain me, Bit," he grumbled. "A bloke could start to take it personal."

"Spike!" Dawn cried, in a strangled sort of shriek, bouncing up and falling back on her ass as she lost her balance. Part of her noticed that he was wearing his demon face for the first time in... she couldn't remember how long, but somehow it didn't seem to matter much. "You're alive!" Not that she'd doubted it for a minute.

"Manner of speaking," Spike said, dropping to one knee. "Now hush." His white-blond hair was singed to half an inch of frizzle. There were still angry red burn marks across his face and all along the backs of his hands where his wrists poked out of the sleeves of his duster. He whipped a big-ass knife out of one boot, making short work of the ropes around her wrists and ankles, and disposed of Anya's bonds just as swiftly. With a quick glance down at the knights' camp, he beckoned the two of them to follow.

Spike led them upstream, slipped noiselessly along a meandering, overgrown path that wound through the underbrush smack up against the canyon wall. The vampire stopped every few yards to jitter impatiently while Dawn and Anya picked their cautious way after him. The moon was just past full, and only now rising over the canyon walls. Spike halted in a grove of cottonwood and white alder, level with the spot where the horses were tethered. He inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring. "Guard just around the bend," he whispered. "But we're all right here for a bit - oomf!"

Dawn flung herself at him, burying her face against his neck, reveling in the smell of leather and tobacco and burned, scared, filthy vampire. Spike caught her up in a fierce, awkward hug - his thin frame was shaking, and he held her like a man who'd feared the loss of something precious. She could feel his chest expand as he breathed her scent in, and she hoped she smelled less a little less gross than he did at the moment. "How did you - ?"

"Like the bit with the ashes? Added a touch of verisimilitude, I thought." Spike bared his fangs in an exceptionally pleased-with-himself grin. "Not the first time I've been cornered by an angry mob in broad daylight, pet. Back seat of the car comes loose. I nip into the back, pull it out, crawl through into the boot, and pull it back in place after me, all at vamp speed. Do it right, an' it looks like I've vanished, 'specially if they're distracted. Boot's locked and I've got the key, so 'nless they've got a crowbar, I just lie doggo till dark." He gave an ostentatious sniff. "Easiest job of tracking I've had in the last half-century - just follow the horseshit."

"I knew you were alive," she half-sobbed. "I just thought - "

Spike gave her a shake, hard enough to bring on a chip-flinch, and hugged her harder. "Don't," he snarled. "Like I'd leave you." He took a deep breath and turned to Anya. "Right, then. I'm going to go back out there, make a ruckus, an' lead the rest of them off. While I've got them chasing me," he pressed the knife into Dawn's hands, "cut as many of the horses loose as you can. An' then scarper, the both of you, back the way you came. I'll keep 'em hopping - we get lucky, they'll break their sodding legs in the dark."

"Wait!" Dawn said. "What about you?"

Spike shook his head impatiently. "Never mind me. You two get the hell out of Dodge. I'll manage."

"No, you won't," said Anya. "It's going to take us hours to walk out of here in the dark, if we don't want to break our own legs. And I think I've broken quite enough bones this year, thank you. You'll have to lead them around till dawn if you want us to get away. How do you expect to get back to the car?"

His silence told Dawn all she needed to know. "Don't you _dare_ tell me you're not going to leave me and then pull something like this!" she said in a furious whisper.

Spike closed his eyes, game face melting back into its usual human contours. When he opened them, they were blue again, but no less pained. "Look," he said, low and intense. "I know what you must think of me, Bit. Can't blame you, can I? If I hadn't buggered it up on that tower - " His voice didn't break, but there were definitely fracture lines. "If I'd done what I promised then... but I won't bollocks it up tonight. I won't."

He couldn't be serious. Could he? "You didn't - "

"I did!" he snarled. "William the Bloody, Slayer of Slayers - what a fucking joke! Can't even put an old man down! Wasn't for me, you'd have been safe as houses, and your sis'd be alive, and - "

Dawn pulled back and gaped at him. How could he be so _stupid?_ "Doc wasn't an old man! He was some kind of uber-demon, with magic and stuff! And Glory had just, like, re-arranged your guts!" Dawn was aware that her voice was rising, and she didn't care. "It wasn't your fault! You did everything you could! If it's anybody's fault Buffy's dead, it's mine - I knew I should have jumped, I knew, it should have been me, and I was just too scared and then she - she - " She was shaking as hard as Spike was, face smashed into his shoulder, and if she started crying now, she'd never stop. "I thought you hated me," she snuffled.

And it was weird, how Spike's breath was coming in harsh hiccupy jerks when he didn't need to breathe at all, except to talk and smoke and track by scent and... boy, that thing about vampires not needing to breathe was really stupid when you thought about it. "Could no more hate you, sweet bit, than - " he broke off, rough-voiced. "Thought you couldn't think very kindly of me. Been a piss-poor... whatever I am, and no mistake." He was the one to pull back this time, staring intently into her eyes. One thumb smoothed the tangled hair back from her tear-streaked face. "Never think I'd trade you, Dawn. Never. Even for her."

There could have been a lot more hugging, in Dawn's opinion, but Anya cleared her throat loudly. "All extremely touching," she said, "but aren't we supposed to be escaping?"

Spike swiped a hand across his nose and shook himself. "Right."

"Some way that doesn't end up with you going extra-crispy," Dawn added. Spike pulled a face, but didn't argue. "You can see in the dark. Can't you just sneak us past the guards?"

"Bank's too narrow, 'nless I draw him off," Spike said promptly, as if any plan which didn't involve a tragic, doomed last stand was distinctly second-rate. "Still wouldn't mind stampeding the horses, though. Aethelred the All-Too-Ready is gonna notice you're gone soon, if we don't give 'em all something to occupy their time."

"At least until the next wave of them shows up," Anya said with a sigh. She pursed her lips. "It's all very aggravating, knowing that whatever we do now, we're just going to have to do the whole thing all over again in a month." She made a shooing motion. "Well? Go chase your horsies. We'll wait here."

But Spike didn't move. Dawn strained to see his face in the darkness. "Spike?"

"She's right. Long as you're the Key, this is gonna keep happening." His fist balled on his knee. "And I can't bloody fight them. Running away only takes you so far."

"Well, yeah." Dawn planted her fists on her hips. "But it's not like I'm going to magically stop being the Key, so - "

"P'raps not," Spike interrupted. "But do they know that?"

Anya blinked. Dawn scratched her nose, where a bramble had caught her across the face on the crawl away from camp. "Um... yes? Now Glory's dead, the Knights of Byzantium are kinda the Key experts, aren't they? I mean, they've been hunting for it - me - for, like, centuries, right?"

"Spike's got a point," said Anya. "No one ever expected the monks to make the Key human, did they? That was thinking outside the box. If I could convince them that hurting you might destroy the universe, maybe we could convince them that you're an ex-Key."

"I already tried that," Dawn pointed out. "But the General wasn't listening."

"Not used up, then," Spike said slowly. He frowned, stroking his chin. "But...spoilt, maybe? Seems to me I recall Glory saying somewhat about the Key being pure - 's why she wouldn't believe it was me, yeh? Vampires aren't pure. Farthest thing from it. So..."

"If we can convince them that Dawn's not pure, they'll go away and leave us alone." Anya finished up with a decisive nod. "The only problem is, exactly what did Glory mean by 'pure?' As thaumaturgic terms go, that one's not terribly precise. It could mean spiritual innocence, or some form of ritual purity we don't know the parameters of - "

"I _knew_ I should have said yes when Kenny Buckley asked me to make out under the bleachers," Dawn muttered. Spike growled rather alarmingly.

"I wouldn't worry about that one," Anya continued. "Magicians are depressingly sexist, but magic isn't. A disembodied energy field which can't have sex to begin with isn't likely to have virginity as a condition for use."

"Then why're we talking about it?" snapped Spike. "What kind of purity are we looking at, then?"

Anya arranged her skirts daintily and sat down on the nearest boulder, hugging her knees. "Whatever the original rituals for using the Key were, they were transliterated into blood magic when Dawn became human. I mean, think about it, it wouldn't do much good to slice up a disembodied mystical energy field with a sword, would it? Disembodied energy fields don't bleed. Not often, anyway, and when they do it's usually a sign that something's gone horribly wrong - "

"Point," Spike cut her off. "Get to it."

"Whatever we do, it's got to involve Dawn's blood." At Spike's low growl and Dawn's horrified look, she added hastily, "But it doesn't have to involve cutting, necessarily. Mystical energy fields don't change, unless someone does a ritual to manipulate them. But human bodies change all the time, all by themselves." She rubbed her splinted wrist and grimaced. "As I keep finding out. So we just need to figure out what kind of change would make Dawn impure." She considered for a minute. "Maybe we can convince them you have leukemia!"

It was hard to tell at this distance, but it looked like the knights were starting to straggle back into camp. Dawn tiptoed to the edge of the spinney and parted the branches to look downstream. A couple of horses stamped and squealed as the breeze picked up - Spike's scent was apparently as unsettling as a real cougar's. Any minute now, someone was going to come and check on the horses, or on her and Anya, and then... "What about, um, that time of month? All that bull about becoming a woman has to be good for _something_."

"That would be perfect!" enthused Anya. "Blood loss is very symbolic."

Dawn thought back. "No, rats, I got my first period back in my fake memories."

Spike made a pained noise. Guys were so squeamish about the weirdest stuff. "Can we please stop talking about blood?" His stomach rumbled audibly. Dawn wondered how long it had been since he'd fed.

"You said yourself, it's always about - oh!" Anya clapped her hand to her mouth. "Oh! I've got it!"- " At Dawn and Spike's blank looks, "Don't you see? Spike's a vampire - impure by definition. He drinks blood! If he drinks Dawn's blood - "

"_No!_ Spike was up in a flash, fangs bared, fists clenched. "Not happening. _Ever!_ Forget it!" There was such passion in his voice, such towering fury in the set of his shoulders, that both she and Anya cringed, forgetting for a moment that this vampire was chipped, neutered, harmless. In another moment he'd deflated. He tapped the side of his head with a finger. "Can't bite, anyway, remember?"

"Spike, I - I wouldn't mind." The catch in her voice couldn't decide if it were fear or anticipation, and there was a weird, hot, squirmy feeling in her belly. "Angel... Angel bit Buffy that once. If I let you bite me, maybe the chip wouldn't..."

Spike's eyes were on her, their blue leached to pale steely grey in the darkness. "An' you think I've got a death wish? You think this is something out of your bloody romance novels, Bit? For a vamp, a bite's about the kill. _Always._ Why d'you think Angel left town? Wasn't just because he couldn't keep his dick in his trousers. He bit your sis, yeh, and he _liked_ it. Not a chance in sodding hell I'll let that happen." He made a slicing motion with one hand. "Think of something else."

A shout from the camp interrupted them. "Hoy! The prisoners are missing!"

There was an immediate uproar, knights running and shouting for the patrols to pull back. "There's no time for anything else!" Anya snapped, and for a minute you could forget _she_ was stripped of her powers, neutered, harmless. "They're coming!"

Maybe it was because she'd done it once before that it was so easy. The monks might have made her out of Buffy, but Dawn didn't have any Slayer super-healing at her command - you could still see the scars on her wrist, thin and white, from where she'd cut herself last winter, when she'd first found out she was the Key. And here she had Spike's big-ass hunting knife in her hand, the lovingly-honed blade only a little dulled from sawing through the ropes. It was incredibly simple to reverse her grip and set the knife-tip (steely-hard, like Spike's eyes) to her own wrist, indenting soft flesh. Even simpler to drive the point in, and _cut_.

"Dawn! No!" There was real horror in Spike's voice - cool, she'd horrified a vampire - and his hard cold fingers were around her wrist in a flash.

"Don't you get it? They're not stupid! It's got to be real!" Dawn shoved the knife, its blade streaked with her blood, in his face. "Eat it, Spike! Now! That really, really hurt, and I don't want to waste it!"

Spike was too stunned to argue. He dropped her wrist as if it were red-hot, and stared, mesmerized by the sight of his own hand, black with her blood. Almost of its own volition his tongue flicked out, quick as a snake's, to taste, and then he was licking his fingers clean with a moan he'd probably think was really embarrassing if he were in any condition to notice. A second later he'd snatched the knife from her hand, and the thought crossed Dawn's mind that it might have been a bad idea to slice open a vein right in front of a half-starved vampire no matter what else was going on.

"There they are! I hear voices!" a knight shouted, and immediately after came the sound of booted feet crashing towards them across the uneven ground. Dawn clutched her throbbing wrist tight and staggered to her feet, hoping she hadn't cut anything vital.

"Do you want to bite me now?" she demanded, challenging.

Spike polished the last drop of blood off the knife and stared at her over the top of the blade, chest heaving, golden eyes burning in the darkness. He licked his lips.

In theory, Dawn was staying with the Rosenbergs until Giles could get hold of her dad. In practice, for the last two weeks she'd she crept out of Willow's bedroom and snuck over to Spike's crypt, where she stayed up till three A.M., eating Cheetos and watching Theatre of Blood on Channel 21. Last week there'd been one where the heroes fed a skeletonized vampire some blood. And OK, Dawn couldn't talk because she'd accidentally invited Harmony into her house once, but new levels of stupid, right there. Much to Spike's scorn, the vampire had swelled up like Ballpark franks, back to normal in an instant, and promptly proceeded to wreak mayhem.

In the real world, Dawn knew, it didn't work like that. Vampires gained and lost weight about the same way people did, and for pretty much the same reasons. Putting some meat back on Spike's bones would take a few weeks of feeding right and working out.

So she didn't expect miracles. She didn't expect anything, really. It was just a mouthful of blood. Which was why the way Spike was staring at her was so freaky. Beneath the jutting ridges of his demon brow his eyes were aflame with unnatural elation, blazing like miniature suns. He stretched out a hand and flexed his fingers, marveling at the smooth white skin where angry burns had been only minutes ago.

"Spike, are you OK?"

Spike gave a loopy giggle. "Fine! Better 'n fine! I'm bloody brilliant! What are we waiting for, then? Time's wasting!" He leaped to his feet, practically vibrating with energy, and swaggered out of the thicket. His pale hair glowed in the moonlight; he might as well have had a neon bullseye on his chest.

Dawn had a sudden flash of memory: Angel, freaky-strong after he'd drunk Buffy's blood, lurching down the hospital corridor like he could barely control his super-charged body. But this was different, and Angel had practically drained Buffy dry - Spike had barely had a taste. "What's wrong with him?"

"Apparently Key blood is vampire crack." Anya got to her feet and brushed the dead leaves off her skirt. "I think we should start working on Plan B."

"Daaaaaaagobert! Ally ally oxen free!" Spike yelled, cupping both hands to his mouth. "Oi! Tin Man! Send General Pinhead up here toot sweet, you nickel-plated oaf! I want a heart-to-heart!"

"It's the demon!" Dagobert bellowed. "Byzantium, to me!"

Crap. Spike did sound high. Or drunk. More drunk than he sounded when he actually _was_ drunk. Dawn could hear shouts and the sounds of running feet splashing through the creek as the rest of the troop rallied to Dagobert's call. Shouts of, "Remember, he can't strike you without pain!" and "Crossbows at the ready!" echoed back and forth across the canyon. The metallic _snik_ of crossbows cocking filled the air.

"Fire!"

Spike vanished, moving too fast for the human eye to follow. He reappeared in midst of Dagobert's men. Pale, spidery hands shot out, wrenching the weapons from the hands of the two closest knights before their fingers could tighten on the triggers. Both crossbows spun off into the darkness, to land in the creek with a splash and a clatter, and both men yelped in pain and surprise. Dawn saw Spike stagger and drop to his knees as the chip fired, then pop to his feet again with a manic grin. Three more knights spun and fired wildly as he blurred out of sight again.

Two bolts went wide, while the third caught one of the disarmed knights in the thigh. The wounded man crumpled with a curse and Spike dropped out of bullet time just as Dagobert swung his shotgun around and emptied both barrels point-blank into the vampire's middle. Spike jerked with the impact and toppled backwards, the black leather wings of his duster unfurling around the pale, infernal halo of his hair. He sprawled motionless on the stones, his skinny, jeans-clad legs splayed wide.

Heart pounding wildly, Dawn leaped out of the bushes. "Dawn! No!" Anya hissed, but Dawn was off and running. A healthy vampire could laugh off a bullet, or even a lot of bullets, from most handguns, but high-caliber shotguns could do real damage. And Spike wasn't exactly a healthy vampire right now.

Stones rolled and shifted under her flying feet - what, was every rock and root in the canyon conspiring against her? General Aethelred was storming up the slope from the creek, flanked by a dozen archers and as many knights brandishing swords and spears. Torches bobbed overhead, painting the oncoming horde a lurid red. Trust Spike to be the first vampire in a century to actually be hunted down by a torch-waving mob. Dawn stumbled, skidded, found her balance, stumbled again. A wave of dizziness washed over her. She must have lost more blood than she'd thought, which was weird, because she could feel it circling inside, throb, throb, throb, a cord of fire knotted in her middle. Huh. Well, live and learn. Or go into shock and die.

The world did a slow, lazy revolution and she saw the ground rushing up to meet her. _That's really going to hurt._

"Whoops-a-daisy!" Strong hands caught her and swept her effortlessly upright. Spike's arm hooked around her waist, and Dawn sagged gratefully against his side. He held up a leather pouch stamped with the insignia of Byzantium and shook it, sending a brass rain of shotgun shells to the ground. "William the Bloody one, Byzantium nought!" he caroled.

"Spike," Dawn croaked, "what's the plan?" He was still wearing that lunatic grin, and his pupils were enormous black wells in his amber eyes - well, they would be in the dark, wouldn't they? His body radiated an un-vampire-like warmth. "There is a plan, right?"

"'Course I've got a plan." Spike sounded offended. "Got lots of plans. Oodles of plans! Plenty of plans, all of them cracking good plans, too! What demon girl said, yeh? Shush, it's General Wossface, with enough arrows in his quiver to re-enact the martyrdom of St. Sebastian. Oooh, not sporting, not sporting at all!"

Aethelred halted at a safe distance and folded his arms across his chest. "Vampire! This charade is pointless. You cannot hurt us, and you would no more harm the Key than her sister would. Until Brother Selwin can examine her, I'm loath to chance the girl's death - but I will kill both of you rather than let her escape." He waved at the bristling arc of bowmen. "Turn the Key over to me, and we will allow you and the demon woman to leave."

"Aren't we ever so manly? P'raps you've noticed..." Spike tugged the front of his t-shirt up. The cloth was a shredded mess, and the pale, concave belly underneath it was peppered with the tiny black dots of buckshot wounds, but there was no blood. "You can't hurt me, either. Seems our Dawn's blood puts Lydia Pinkham to shame. Could be it'll work on headaches, too. Want to find out?"

Dagobert's jaw clenched, causing his mustache to bristle like a belligerent hedgehog. He took a step forward, and the General laid a restraining hand on his arm. Dawn could see him working out the odds. Unless they hit Spike's heart dead on, the bolts wouldn't stop him any more than the shotgun had. She knew that Spike couldn't keep up the super-speed indefinitely, and the pain from the chip would get worse the more damage Spike tried to inflict, but the knights' briefing might not have been that thorough.

"Thought not," Spike purred. "Now. Let's us have a chat. You'd kill her, yeh, you've stones enough for that. But it'll eat at you. Every night, for the rest of your days, you'll wake, and you'll see her eyes staring back at you out of the dark." His hand cupped her cheek, dry and strangely warm. Dawn thought it trembled a little. "So bloody beautiful..." He blinked and shook himself, lapsing in and out of game face like he couldn't remember which was which. "Wages of being a good man. 'Course," his grin grew sharper, more predatory. "I'm makin' the assumption that you are a good man."

Aethelred said nothing. Dawn hoped that was a good sign. Spike couldn't lie to Buffy to save his life, but put him in a situation like this and he turned into Gielgud. Or at least Matt Damon.

"Things have changed since you and your band of merry men last took the Sunnydale tour." Spike held Dawn's bleeding wrist up for all to see and ran his tongue along the length of her forearm, starting slick and human-soft, ending demon-rough. "Delicious," he drawled, stretching the word out like warm taffy. "You say I won't kill her, and you're right. But you've got the whys of it all wrong. Slayer's rotting in the ground - what's a promise to her, now? You want the Key neutralized. And for me it's all about the blood. Seems to me we can both get what we want, without you losing sleep of nights."

"And how do you propose to... neutralize her?" Aethelred demanded, in a voice as stiff as his spine.

Spike's chuckle was possibly the filthiest thing Dawn had ever heard. "Already done, Prince Valiant. Key's supposed to be pure, yeh?" His hand slipped upwards from her waist. "An' she's anything but, now that I'm in the picture."

"Spike!" Dawn hissed. "You're touching my boob!"

"Blimey, Sherlock, I hadn't noticed!" Spike hissed back. "Try an' look debauched here!"

Dawn dropped her voice to a Penthouse moan. "Oh, Spike!" She tossed her head back in her best impersonation of a romance-novel cover painting. Why should Spike have all the good lines? "My purity is totally sullied! Bite me harder! You make it hurt soooooo good!"

The millisecond of absolute horror that flashed across Spike's face was pretty much worth the admission for the whole night. He recovered fast, though. "There, you've heard it from her lips. Impure as I am. Her power's no use to anyone any longer. 'Cept me."

"So you would suggest, then," Dagobert said with an icy sneer, "That as good men, we hand over a girl scarcely more than a child to a creature as loathsome as you, to be used for your pleasure?"

Spike snorted. "There's consistency for you. You're willing to have murder on your conscience, but you balk at a spot of pandering?"

"Maynard! Aelfric!" the General snapped.

A pair of dark-robed clerics pushed through the line of bowmen and hastened to their leader's side. Maynard folded his hands into his sleeves and bowed deeply. "Your will, my lord?"

"The vampire claims," the General said tersely, "To have made the girl his... doxy." His lip curled with distaste.

"Doxy's such a nasty word," Spike murmured. "I prefer 'box lunch.'"

"Be that as it may," Aethelred said. "The undead are vile creatures. What chance is there his... association with the girl has corrupted her essence?"

The clerics frowned, putting their heads together - Spike could probably hear every word, but to Dawn it was only indecipherable mumbling. Her head was pounding, and the torches were surrounded by pulsing haloes of light. What was wrong with her?

"We have not the means to be certain, my lord," Maynard said at last. "But there is one infallible test we can put her to."

"What, are you going to see if I weigh the same as a duck?" Dawn muttered.

Maynard shot her a dirty look. "Fetch Orlando here. Where the Key is concerned, a madman may speak a truth the rest of us have too much wit to see."

The General looked from Dawn to Spike and back again, lips pressed to military precision, eyes inscrutable. Dawn clutched Spike's ruined t-shirt, her palms damp with nerves. Maybe she'd overdone it on the artistic touches. Aethelred stroked his goatee, "Very well," he said at last. "Bring us Orlando."

Spike stiffened. "Oi, now, half a mo' - "

"That's a _great_ idea," Dawn interrupted, wedging an elbow into Spike's ribs. "Besides, it's not like we have any choice, is it, Spike?"

He glared at her, and Dawn tried to drill her intent into his brain by return glare - if Spike hadn't possessed a skull of solid ivory, maybe it would have worked better, but the long moment they spent making faces at one another confused the knights enough that no one tried to hurry things up. At last Spike shook himself and snapped, "Fine, then! Bring him on. Bring 'em all on. On Comet and Cupid, Orlando an' Vixen!"

Aethelred nodded. Maynard and Aelfric bowed to the General in unison, and trotted off towards camp. The sound of rocks clacking beneath their boots was quickly lost beneath the susurrus of the river and the moan of the wind in the canyon overhead. Dawn clung to Spike's arm, as much because she was afraid she'd fall down if she didn't as to put on a show, and watched the flame of their torches dwindle to bobbing pinpoints of light over the dark water. For a second the trailing torch bobbled and almost went out as one of the brothers slipped on the treacherous footing. Dawn turned away, Blair-Witch queasy. She could feel Spike jittering and twitching in her grasp, muttering under his breath - if she hadn't been holding on to him he'd be doing his caged-panther pacing thing, up and down, back and forth on the rocks.

It took a small forever for the clerics to return, frog-marching a wild-eyed Orlando between them. "Orlando!" Dawn cried, before anyone else could say anything. "Tell them - I'm not pure anymore, am I? I'm spoiled! I'm no good as the Key!"

The mad knight cringed in his captors' grip, head whipping from Dawn to Spike and back again. "Green girl," he whispered, eyes scrunching closed. Dawn thought she saw tears in the bloody light of the torches. His eyes flew open, wide as the moon overhead. "Green girl gone greener grass is always gone to seed, to sea, to see, bleeding away, going, going, gone." He trailed off with a broken sob, fixing his burning gaze on Spike. "You see, now. You know!"

Spike blinked owlishly. "Couldn't ask for a plainer word than that," he said. "Right! We'll be off, then."

"Silence, demon." Aethelred turned to the monks. "Brothers...?"

Aelfric shrugged and shook his head, his face shadowed beneath the muffling folds of his hooded cassock. He was holding his torch awkwardly, as if he'd hurt his arm in his earlier stumble.

Maynard gave his colleague an irritated look. "Our brother's words are obscure, but - "

"Traitors!" Orlando shrieked. Both clerics jumped back with a start, Aelfric ducking behind the General for protection. "Kinslayers! Fools! Does the Queen of Air and Darkness grieve? Does she sob like a child in the night?"

"Hey!" Dawn protested. "I don't - " Much, anyway.

"All that's green bleeding, bleeding away, when the demon drinks deep, but slit the lamb's throat and her blood will run red enow!" Orlando ranted. He pointed accusingly at Spike. "Here's a fountain of it, aye - will you rush to bathe in ruination, drink deep of corruption? Every hand here, a study in scarlet!"

"Oh, there will be ruination, all right," Spike crooned, bouncing on his toes, fingers flexing at his sides. His teeth were sharp and his eyes fever-bright in the torchlight. "If you come at her through me. Count up your quick, General, 'cos when William the Bloody's done, there'll be songs counting up your dead."

Whether Spike could back up his threats or not was an open question, but Aethelred, at least, seemed to be considering it. "Aelfric, to your station," the General snapped, waving the cowering monk away. "Rest assured I shall speak to your superiors of this shameful behavior later." Chastened, Aelfric ducked his head and slunk off back in the direction of the camp. Aethelred rubbed his forehead tattoo as if it pained him. "Orlando - speak as plainly as you can, for the love of the oaths we both swore. Is the girl yet the Key, or not?"

Orlando stood shivering, arms wrapped tightly around himself. Holding the madness in - or out. "Oaths," he spat, and then, with a meaning look at Dawn, "What's a Key when no lock will fit her? The lady's not for burning." He gave an exaggerated nod, laying one finger aside of his nose.

Aethelred cocked an eyebrow at Maynard, whose cheeks quivered in distress. The cleric gave a nervous little half-bow. "My liege... addled though his wits may be, I see little room for doubt here. The girl is no longer the Key. Or," he corrected himself, "Orlando no longer believes her to be."

A rustle ran through the assembled knights, the creak of leather, the jungle of mail, the hiss of one murmuring to the other. Aethelred heaved a great sigh and leveled an assessing look at Spike. "You are right in one respect, demon. I would fain leave this field with my hands clean of innocent blood. And yet I mislike leaving the child with you scarcely less."

"I've been on the run from your stupid knights for a _year,_" Dawn said, low and furious. "My mother is dead, my sister is dead, and my dad apparently doesn't give a shit. My best friend is a vampire, and I saw what Glory did to your brothers. Every bit of it." She drew herself up, straight as the spinning world allowed. "I'm not a _child._"

The General's shoulders sagged. "No," he said. "I suppose you are not, at that." He tugged at his beard for a moment, then added, grudgingly, "You and the woman are welcome to share our fire for the night. The demon must remain here."

Spike growled, and Dawn shook her head. "Thanks, but no thanks. We'll just be going. Spike can see in the dark."

"Very well, then." Wearily, he rounded upon the assembled knights, and waved. "Return to camp. We leave for the chapterhouse at dawn."

Dawn caught Orlando's eye. _Thank you,_ she mouthed, and he reached out one longing hand, his fingers closing on darkness as Maynard hustled him away. Her knees buckled, and Spike swept her up in his arms, very Rhett Butler, except she was pretty sure Scartlett O'Hara wouldn't have felt like barfing all over Rhett's waistcoat. ""Hell of a chance you took there, Niblet," he muttered. "Hell of a hell of a hell of a chance."

"Not as big as you think," she slurred. "Like I said. I saw what Glory did. And she didn't use a knife. And if Glory didn't give Orlando that scar..." She gave a loose shrug, encompassing the length and breadth of human perfidy. "Somebody knight-shaped pretty much had to. It wasn't there when I saw him in the hospital." Dawn clutched the lapels of Spike's duster - the tobacco smell, usually weirdly reassuring, was only making her queasier. "Where's Anya?"

Spike's nostrils flared, and he swung around with speed enough to drastically increase the barf forecast. "Going, going, gone - not in the brush anymore. Anya!"

"You don't have to shout," Anya's voice came from the direction of the river. A few seconds later Dawn heard her footsteps on the rocky beach, and there she was, stepping fastidiously from boulder to boulder in the chancy moonlight. A long black robe flapped around her slender body, hood thrown back and sleeves pushed up to her elbows. She stopped, panting a little, and shrugged out of its enveloping folds. "I don't expect we'll be needing that any longer," she said, "and I'm sure Aelfric doesn't want to ride home in his skivvies. Or perhaps he does. One never knows about those monkly types."

"What the fuck," Spike asked with great feeling, "were you up to?"

"Plan B," Anya replied placidly. She held up a short-bladed, triangular knife - the same one that Aethelred had been ready to play Operation with not so long ago. "A sacrifice is exponentially more difficult without the sacrificial knife. I thought it might buy us some time, at least. So I followed Aelfric in the dark, hit him on the head with a rock, stole his robe, and lifted the knife from the General in disguise."

Spike's look of admiration was mostly lost in the dark. "I love a bird with a violent streak." He bounded to the top of the nearest boulder, as if Dawn weighed nothing at all. "Come on, come on, come on, you lot! Westward ho!"

***

The climb up out of the canyon was a dark, nauseating blur. Hours passed as the moon arced high and then slid down again behind the canyon walls. Spike pistoned on, hacking his way through tangled brush and clambering up the broken steps of stone like some kind of robot that had lost its governor and was running full-tilt until it threw a rod. Dawn and Anya staggered along behind him, sometimes hanging on to his belt, sometimes lifted off their feet when Spike grew impatient with their lagging human pace. All the while the vampire kept up a rapid-fire litany of complaints, encouragement, and increasingly wild rambling.

"...never realized, never saw it before, dunno why, 'm very observant - you noticed that, yeh? All fits together but I can't see the bloody pieces - arrgh!" Spike knuckled his eyes. "If I could just see - "

Shut up, shut up, shut up, Dawn thought. But she was too tired and sick to fight with him now. She'd always thought of herself as being in pretty good shape - not a track star, and certainly not the Slayer, but not a total couch potato either. Now every breath burned. Her head pounded and she couldn't feel her feet and any minute now she was going to throw up. But she couldn't collapse, not when they were so close. They were nearly to the place where the access road had been blocked off, the farthest place where someone might find them, if someone came looking.

"'cos it's all there, right there, secret of the bloody universe, all so fucking beautiful, the light, but it _twists,_ you see?" Spike spun around, walking backwards, staring at her with hungry, desperate eyes. "Goes right around the corner and I can't follow - "

Her heel caught on a rock and Dawn collapsed in a flailing heap, crashing to hands and knees in a thicket of live oak. Prickly branches lashed her face and dead leaves and old acorns crunched beneath her knees. Her belly convulsed, muscles seizing up so hard it hurt, and she retched into the gnarled roots. Spike was beside her in an instant, kneeling in the oak litter, dry leaves dusting his shoulders. She clung to him, coughing and spitting to clear the bile from her nose. "Spike," she moaned, "What's wrong with me? What's wrong with _you?_"

"Nothing wrong." He shivered, like a horse shaking off flies. "Too much right. Slayer's blood's like whiskey. Like supping on the heart of the sun. You, love - you're absinthe. Drives a bloke moon-mad." He gave a sick little laugh. "Used to wonder what Dru saw when she looked at you, pet. Now I know."

Drusilla had never looked at her, not really, never begged Angelus to make her a pretty present of a glowing green girl-doll. All those memories were fake. But Spike never seemed to care about that. "It was only a few drops," she whimpered. "Why doesn't it wear off?"

Anya leaned against the nearest tree, cradling her bad arm in her good hand. She looked as dead-tired as Dawn felt. "I told you," she said, in her oh-what-fools-these-mortals-be voice. "The power of the Key's manipulated by rituals of blood magic. What you did back there when you fed him your blood was half-assed, but it was a ritual - channeling intent through action. You had intent, and you acted."

"I don't have intent anymore! Make it stop!" Dawn wailed, probably forfeiting her not-a-child cred for the next year or so.

Spike gnawed on a thumbnail, looking as if he might proceed on to the finger-bone beneath, given half a chance. "Lovely theory, bloody gorgeous, simply smashing, but it's bollocks. Doesn't get like this every time she gets a paper cut, does she? Got to be something else."

"How should I know?" said Anya, irritable. She brushed a strand of sweaty hair from her eyes, and dropped to her haunches. "There are all kinds of factors involved, and it's not as if she came with a manual. Maybe there's no magic involved at all, and she's just dehydrated and going into heat prostration."

"_She_ is right here," said Dawn, curling into a sullen, queasy ball.

"Let's look at this logically." Anya pursed her lips. "Spike, you said you could see her - what do you see?"

Spike ducked his head, growling in frustration. "That's the bloody problem! I can't - it doesn't - 's all twisted up inside my head! Can't stop thinking about it, can't make anything of it!"

"Try," Anya said unsympathetically.

It was totally stupid to feel sorry for herself now. And yet, somehow, she managed it. "Is it - is it that bad?" Dawn asked. "Seeing what I really am?"

"Oh, love," Spike's eyes softened, his face melting into lines of adoration. "You're beautiful. But it's too much. I can't - " He clutched his singed hair, face twisted in a grimace of something beyond pain. "There's no room! You don't _fit!_" His eyes squeezed shut, and he rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. Somewhere overhead, a bird shrilled an early greeting to the coming sunrise. After a moment he said, "'s green. Not really, but if it was a color and you could name it, it'd be green. Got a pattern to it, if only you could make it out, but you can't - it's never still, is it? And it's... hooked into everything. 'S hooked into _me_." One hand clutched at his chest. "Or I'm hooked into it. It - "

"I can feel my blood moving around inside of me. And something's _pulling_ on it," Dawn interrupted, hating the whiny note in her voice. "Do something!"

"Who do you think I am, Willow?" Anya asked indignantly. "I'm not going to try to break a spell when I don't even know what it's doing. I might turn you both into newts. Or blow things up."

"But you have to do something!" Dawn shrieked. "You're the only one of us that knows anything about magic! Please, Anya, it's almost sunrise!"

"Oh, all right! I'll try. But if both of you end up living out your short, moist lives in an aquarium next to Amy the Rat, don't say I didn't warn you." Anya wrapped her arms around her knees, sharp brows knit in a pensive frown. "OK. Here's a thought. The Key attunes to whatever dimension it's in. It couldn't open portals between them, otherwise. And how did vampires came into being? The last of the Old Ones, the pure demons, infected a human corpse with its essence _as it was being forced out of this dimension!_" She gave a triumphant nod. "Setting up a connection between something attuned to this dimension and something that was frozen in the process of being pushed out of it probably wasn't the best of ideas."

"Tangled," muttered Spike, still rocking. "Between us. Knots and tangles, snarls and snags, all around the mulberry bush. All buggered up's what it amounts to."

Dawn tried to concentrate on what Anya was saying, but the words didn't seem to mean anything. She felt like fainting. Maybe. She'd never actually fainted before, so how would she know what it felt like? If it meant the whole world going grey and rushing away at the speed of... of a rushing grey thing, she was totally on it.

"Dawn!" a voice shouted. Something slapped her across the face, hard, and someone not-her yelled in pain. Pale bony fingers, broken knuckles, bitten nails mottled with flecks of black polish. Hand. Spike's hand. Spike's face, skull-white in the lightening darkness, eyes blazing golden moons, lips - not bloodstained, because there'd been so very little blood, and he'd licked up every drop - parted over the ivory razors of his fangs. "Dawn," he said, soft and pleading. You wouldn't think a mouth like that could form words so tender. "Come back to me."

"Don't leave me," she whispered thickly, not even sure what she meant by that. "They all leave me. Stay. Please."

"It's getting worse!" Spike snarled. He whipped his knife out, so quickly it seemed to appear in his hand like magic, and pressed it to his chest through the rags of his t-shirt. Dark blood beaded around the blade as the tip bit into pale flesh. "Connection, is there - I'll cut it out, is what I'll do. Blood for blood."

"Yes, because the way to fix a botched-up piece of blood magic is more botched-up blood magic," Anya said tartly, snatching the knife away. "Look, I may be talking out my ass here, but I'm all you've got, so _listen_ before going all _Sweeney Todd_ on us. You're using the wrong knife." She produced the athame she'd stolen from the General. "And I'm pretty sure that _you_ doing it would be a bad idea."

Without warning she plunged the athame into Spike's chest, right at the point he'd been clutching, gouging out a divot of flesh the size of Dawn's palm. Bone gleamed white in the failing moonlight, then drowned in upwelling blood. Spike gasped, staring down at his chest.

It was Dawn who screamed.

"It moved," Spike whispered. He looked at Dawn, then back down at his bleeding chest. His hand slid down to his belly. "It _moved._ Hooks and needles, claws dug in deep - hold still, and we'll gut you yet, mate!" Anya yipped as he retrieved the knife, vamp-fast, and drove it into his belly.

"Wait!" Anya grabbed his wrist. Spike froze, staring at her, blood-trickles raking black clawmarks across his stomach. "Spike's right. There's something more going on here. Dawn," she said, very quietly, "you have to let go."

What was she taking about? "I can't!" Dawn sobbed, clutching her own chest, trying to hold in the vast empty ache within. She wasn't human at all, just an empty shell, stretched tighter and tighter around nothing at all. "I'll never see him again!"

Spike dropped the knife and cradled her close. Gross cold vampire blood seeped into her shirt. He was so terribly strong, so terribly thin, nothing more than bone and piano-wire muscle. She'd fix that. Make him drink his pig's blood, even when he bitched about the taste. And they'd watch _Theatre of Blood_ and play cheater's poker and stay up way too late and maybe someday he'd look at her and she wouldn't see her sister's ghost in his eyes, and then --

But only if he stayed. Only if he stayed.

"You'll see me to the end of your days, love." Spike buried his face in her hair. "Promised your sister, didn't I?"

She wrenched away. "Buffy's _dead!_"

"And I promise you, too!" he snarled, giving her a shake.

"Think of that old saying," said Anya. "'If you love something, let it go, and if it doesn't come back - '"

"Forget about it?" Dawn finished bitterly.

Spike rolled his eyes. Behind him, she could see the lightening of the eastern sky, and the branches black against the dawn. "No, hunt the ungrateful bastard down an' kill him."

Maybe this was how Buffy had felt, on the tower. With a deep breath, Dawn Summers let go.

This time, it was Spike who screamed, clawing at his belly like his guts were falling out. Anya snatched up the knife again, and with her splinted hand made a clumsy grab at nothingness, as if grasping some invisible lifeline. The knife slashed downwards, and the night bled emeralds, coruscating brilliance that outshone the rising sun. Dawn cried out as the blade sheared through a connection subtler than flesh and bone. The terrible million-fishhook tugging at the core of her was shredding, fraying, dissolving, taking parts of her with it. Fragments of memory, of self, whipping away like leaves in a whirlwind. Dawn reached out, desperate to catch them, but it was too late. The last strand of... _something_ snapped, and she was falling, falling, falling into the light.

***

It was warm, and the sun was high. Dawn lay still, breathing in the scent of damp earth and oak mast, and wondering exactly why sunshine should be such a horrifying concept. Until she rolled over and saw Spike's pale hand curled like a dead spider in the dry leaves, fingertips half an inch from the bright shaft of light. He looked terrible; there was a big icky half-healed wound in his chest, and the leaves beneath him were sticky with dried blood.

She shot upright, banged her head against something hard and knotty, and doubled over again with a yelp. Swearing and clutching her head, she grabbed Spike's wrist and tugged his arm farther into the shade. Spike snored. Some gallant protector he was. Dawn rubbed her eyes and looked around. She was crouched in a musty-smelling hollow at the foot of a fallen tree. An earth-clotted tangle of roots arched overhead, mostly screening them from the sun, and the ground beneath her was lumpy with dead leaves and rotting acorns. Spike was crammed into a crevice at the very rear of the hollow, and Anya was curled up at the entrance.

How had they gotten here? She hurt all over, and her whole body was covered with bruises and cuts she couldn't remember getting, and plenty that she did. They'd been driving to Fresno, and there'd been... she frowned. A hitchhiker? Yeah. And then the knights had showed up, and then... memory frayed into a confusing kaleidoscope of fragments: bouncing along on horseback under a bright hot sun, the red flicker of torchlight, the gleam of fangs. None of it made any sense. Maybe she'd hit her head. She'd check for bruises, except, well, she'd just hit her head.

There was a canteen at Anya's side, still holding a few swallows gurgling in the bottom when she shook it. Dawn gulped the water greedily and then bit her lip in retroactive guilt; maybe she should have saved some for Anya. Maybe they were still close enough to the stream that she could get more water.

Spike moaned a little, twitching in his sleep. His eyes drifted open, and he blinked muzzily and grimaced. "Oh, my sodding _head_..."

"Spike!" Dawn dropped the canteen and flung her arms around him. "You're OK!"

"Be better if you stop strangling me," Spike growled, but he made no move to disentangle her. "Bloody hell, what time is it? Jenkins, wake up!"

"Five more minutes," Anya mumbled, waving her unsplinted hand feebly.

"In five minutes those medieval plonkers may be - " Spike trailed off, scowling and running a hand over his jaw. Dawn could see that he didn't have much more than a day's growth of whiskers, so they couldn't have been out for too long. "Bugger," he said. He poked gingerly at the wound in his chest, where the muscle was just starting to knit back across the bone beneath a parchment-thin sheath of raw pink new skin. "No. They're gone, yeh? We sent them packing, didn't we? Epic battle, pulled the wool over their eyes somehow?"

"I... I think so," Dawn said. She scrunched her eyes shut, trying to remember. "There was a knife..." She whirled around on her knees, searching through the leaf-litter. "Wasn't there?"

"This?" Anya held up the athame - the hilt was mostly intact, but the blade was only a twisted, blackened stub of metal. "Ow!" She dropped it, sucking her fingers. "It's _hot._" She frowned, examining her palm. "There was a spell. Something to do with... doors?"

Spike levered himself to a sitting position, moving as if every muscle ached, which it probably did. "Bloody magic. Never goes well." He squinted up through the roots at the bright sky overhead, and inched a little farther back into the hollow. "If those wankers back in Sunnydale had listened to me and let us drive at night..."

Anya snorted. "Right. We'd have slipped past undetected, because a platinum blond vampire driving a '59 DeSoto at midnight could never possibly be mistaken for a platinum blond vampire driving a '59 DeSoto at noon."

Dawn was pretty sure they'd had this exact argument before, in reverse. "Never mind that." She rubbed her temples. "Okay. We can work this out. The knights had us, and Spike came to rescue us, and... and...I can't remember what happened after that. Or only bits and pieces."

They patched the night together again, eventually. Most of it, anyway. Spike remembered climbing down the canyon walls in the dark, clinging like a limpet to the rock while the yellow flare of campfires blinked like vampire eyes along the river below. Anya remembered stealing the knife. Dawn remembered her gamble with Orlando, and the General turning away, ordering his men to follow. But the farther into the night they got, the more holes there were, until at last all the little holes ran together into one great big bottomless pit of _what the heck?_ Exactly why the knife looked like it had been through Mount Doom, and exactly how Spike had gotten those barely-healing scars, or how she'd acquired the cut on her wrist (and that bothered Dawn more than anything else, because she didn't _do_ that kind of thing to herself anymore)... nada. It was like the knife had carved away whole chunks of the night along with chunks of Spike's flesh.

"Obviously I did something exceptionally clever to convince them you weren't the Key," Anya concluded at last. "Probably it interfered with the spell that wrote you into everyone's memory. I'd really rather that I remembered it. If only for my resume."

"Oi! How d'you know it wasn't me?" Spike demanded. "I've done spells, you know!"

"How do we know it was any of us?" Dawn said, tossing a desultory acorn at Spike. "Maybe the Knights did it."

Spike initiated a retaliatory strike. "Well, whoever did it cocked it up royally. We're lucky the Bit didn't disappear up her own existence." He looked disconcerted for a moment. "Strike that bit about it being me who did it, then."

Anya ducked beneath the acorn crossfire and crawled out into the open, shaking a few oak leaves out of her shoes. "The _important_ thing is, I really want to be someplace with soap and running water." She stretched and looked around. "Ooh, look, we're not completely lost! I can see the gate across the access road from here!"

Spike shrugged out of his duster and began peeling off the remains of his t-shirt. "Wouldn't be so cheerful about it if I were you. It's miles back to the highway, and hours till sunset yet. An' when we get there, we've four flat tires and only one spare. Even odds the blood in the cooler'll have gone off, and I'm famished."

"Well, don't look at me," Anya said. "Catch a squirrel or something."

"Like I'd bite a couple of scrawny bints like you lot in the first place - " Spike froze, eyes blazing yellow. "Hold on. I hear an engine."

All Dawn could hear was Spike's stomach rumbling, but then she realized the noise was getting too loud for that, and coming from the road. A cloud of pale dust rose above the treetops, drawing slowly nearer. Dawn gulped. Had the Knights decided to come back, with reinforcements? Anya gave a shriek of delight, crammed her shoes back on, and dashed off towards the trailhead, arms waving. A tow truck bounced into view between the trees, Xander at the wheel, Giles hanging out the passenger side window. The DeSoto, much the worse for wear, was balanced precariously atop the truck bed.

Xander brought the truck to a lumbering halt and hopped out to jerk the chains tighter around the DeSoto's rear tires. "Watch the paint job, you bloody Philistine!" Spike bellowed, crawling half-way out of the hollow and jerking back as sunlight clipped the tip of his nose. "That car's a classic!"

"You can stroll over and give me a hand any time, fang-face!" Xander yelled back, adjusting the winch.

And just like that, they were on their way home.

***

There wasn't enough room for everyone in the cab of the truck, so Dawn volunteered to sit in the DeSoto with Spike. Smoking through his duster and two layers of blanket, the vampire leaped into the front seat, slammed the door behind him, and laid into the horn. Through the car's filthy windshield and the equally filthy rear window of the tow truck, Dawn saw Xander flip him off and throw the truck into gear.

It was kind of neat, riding this high, though the truck's suspension left a lot to be desired. Spike was looking kind of green, though - either he wasn't as recovered as he wanted everyone to think, or vampires were extra-susceptible to motion sickness. It wasn't until they jounced off the access road and onto the highway again that he relaxed his grip on the steering wheel, sat back with a sigh, and emerged from his blankets. "Dunno how as I'm going to nick a whole set of new tires for the old girl," he muttered, half to himself. "Not as if you can tuck 'em into your coat pocket and stroll out of the dealership."

Dawn took a swig at the mostly unmelted Slurpee she'd guilted Giles out of. Outside the windows, telephone poles whizzed past, like yesterday's drive unspooling in reverse. It didn't feel, somehow, as if they were headed back to the same place they'd left. She gave Spike a sideways glance. He was slouched in the opposite corner, one hand draped protectively over the useless steering wheel, one booted foot propped on the dashboard. He was swimming in a shirt borrowed from Xander, his scruffy platinum curls backlit by the filtered sunlight.

"I guess a vamp needs his wheels," she said carefully, "To... go places." Spike didn't catch the hint. Dawn wasn't even sure she was dropping one. "I could... help you," she continued. "I mean, I could, like, distract the garage guys or something while you do the actual evil stealing of tires part."

Spike blinked and turned a look of surprise and gratitude upon her. "Much appreciated, Snack-size. But..." There was less regret in his voice than you might have expected. "Your sis wouldn't like it."

"Buffy's dead." Whoa. Deja vu.

"Doesn't matter," Spike said, as if that ended the argument, forever and ever amen.

And she could have left it at that, and she wasn't sure why she didn't, except that it seemed like a cowardly thing to do, and she was tired of being afraid. "Yeah, it kinda does," she said. "Look, you promised to take care of me and all... but the Knights are gone now. And the details of why may be fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure they aren't coming back. Giles is going to track down my Dad any day now, and...and I know you've got stuff to do. Bad evil vampire stuff." Dawn took a deep breath, and did the second bravest thing she'd ever done in her life. That she remembered doing, anyway. "So if you need to... to go places, I just wanted you to know... I understand. And I'll be OK."

She devoted the next eternity or so to excavating precise little holes in her cup of pink slush with the straw, which had this little spoon thing on the end for just such emergencies. What would you call it, a stroon or a spaw? Witness the marvels of modern Slurpee technology.

"Niblet," Spike said at last, and then, "Dawn."

Her belly made a swoopy dip that couldn't entirely be accounted for by the crappy suspension. Could you still have a crush on a guy you'd peeled drunk and filthy off the floor of his crypt, smacked to consciousness, and dragged out of same? A guy who regarded the necks of most people he met with the same fond regard with which he surveyed an extra-rare cheeseburger? A guy who was still madly in love with your dead sister? Maybe she'd think about that some time when she wasn't possibly concussed. He was wearing an expression she was sure she'd seen before, she just wasn't sure where. Kind of a smile, but kind of sad, too. "Your sis... I know she didn't want me in her life, there at the end. She just needed me for a bit, is all. Just like you. No, hush. You know why I fell for her? Wasn't her pretty face, nor her pretty... other parts, though I can't say I didn't fancy those too. It was her heart. Same heart as you've got - valiant, is what she was. What you are." He reached across the seat, fingertips barely brushing the fall of her hair. "Someday, love, you'll hand me my walking papers, 'stead of giving me leave to fetch them myself. And on that day, I'll go. But not one day before."

Dawn sat very still. Then, very deliberately, she slouched down and propped her left foot on the dash, sneaker briefly bumping toes with beat-up Docs. "Well, it's a good thing you're immortal," she said. "Because that day? You'll be waiting a looooong time for it."

And he could have said something lame about how she was too young to know what she wanted about stuff like that, but he didn't. Spike just laced his hands behind his head and grinned, the first real, genuine grin she could remember seeing from him since Buffy'd died. Or maybe ever. "That so? Then get me my slippers, Liza."

There was only one answer to that. "Get 'em yourself," Dawn replied. And the road unwound before them, taking them home to someplace new.

**END**


End file.
